Several HBO social media accounts, including those for hit shows like Game of Thrones and Veep, were hacked Wednesday, Variety reports. A group called OurMine carried out the attack, posting a message on HBOs official Twitter scolding the network for its weak security.
The social media hack comes as HBO continues to deal with the fallout from a major cyber attack. In late July, a different hacker group obtained a trove of sensitive data from HBO and has since beenleaking scripts and episodes of various shows.
However, OurMines goals were far less nefarious. After gaining access to HBOs Twitter, the group wrote in a since-deleted tweet: Hi, OurMine are here, we are just testing your security, HBO team please contact us to upgrade the security. Per screenshots, the group posted the same message on the Game of Thrones Facebook page, as well as the note, lets make #HBOHacked trending!
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Other HBO programs that saw their social media accounts usurped include Veep, Last Week Tonight, Silicon Valley and Ballers. HBO quickly deleted OurMines posts after they went up.
Per The Daily Beast, OurMine, a self-described white hat hacker group whose goals are to raise awareness about lax security, has carried out similar attacks on high profile websites and social media pages. The group has previously targeted sites like BuzzFeed, YouTube and Wikipedia, and the personal accounts of tech CEOs like Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and Googles Sundar Pichai.
While HBO was able to quickly regain control of its social media pages, it remains at the whims of the other hackers, who claim they have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the network. Earlier this month, the hackers, who go by Mr. Smith, demanded HBO hand over about $6 million in bitcointo stop the leaks. The group has already posted unreleased episodes and scripts for shows like Insecure, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ballers and Room 104, while on Wednesday amidst the social media takeover Mr. Smith leaked yet another episode of Game of Thrones.